Having chosen to move to this country in part for its meritocracy (however flawed), this past Friday’s Royal Wedding provoked profoundly mixed feelings, but no such ambivalence about the architecture and design side of my native country: Westminster Abbey, in all its Gothic glory and (not visible on TV) its uniquely English hodgepodge of headstones and statues of famed poets and politicians, scientists and soldiers; the bride’s modern regal dress by Alexander McQueen’s Sarah Burton, who also created Michelle Obama’s stunning outfit for the State Dinner for the Chinese Premier; and of course the …

Having been to architecture school I can vouch for the fact that architects are not trained to talk; or let’s say, they are not trained to talk in plain, or better yet, entertaining, English. But there’s one architecture duo that does not need a translator and that’s Craig Hodgetts + HsinMing Fung, architects and professors (he at UCLA, she at SCI-Arc) whose latest building, the “Wild Beast” theater at CalArts attests to their constant inventiveness. Hodgetts, assuredly one of the wittiest designers in LA, and Fung, will give a …